When Simion Dumitrache arrived in Ireland in 1990, one of the first things he did was to check out the newsagents. He was in search of what he expected to be a vast array of literary journals in this "island of scholars". Coming from Romania where there are hundreds of such magazines and periodicals, Simion felt this was the way to penetrate the cultural life of his newly-adopted country. He found, he says sadly, only the Times Literary Supplement.
Nine years on, the 46-year-old Dumitrache, a writer, journalist and translator, lives in Cavan and edits a bi-monthly literary and arts magazine, known up to this as the WP Journal. The first 1999 issue of the magazine is currently with the printers (a fire at the regular printing plant in Cavan has delayed publication) and represents a brave new start and a fresh title: First Edition. The WP of the old title, standing for Windows Publications, was often confused with the political party, Simion says, so although this is the first edition of First Edition, it comes with a four-year history of hardy survival in the often wintry world of literary publishing.
Like most arts journals, it has a hand-to-mouth existence. Funded by the arts councils, north and south, as well as Monaghan County Council and Bord na Gaeilge, First Edition is produced from the small flat on Town Hall Street in Cavan which Dumitrache shares with his partner - and assistant editor of the magazine - Hannah D. Maguire. But though it is strongly rooted in Cavan town, with much support from local businesses in the form of a healthy quotient of advertisements, Simion is quick to point out that First Edition, a 16-page tabloid, is strongly internationalist in its concerns. It boasts correspondents in the US, England, Scotland, Romania, Switzerland, France and Canada. Some of these are thanks to the far-flung Romanian diaspora; others came across the magazine by word-of-mouth and have become contributors.
The subject matter is as eclectic. The latest edition, for example, features poetry from John Montague, an interview with the South African composer, Abdullah Ibrahim, a forum on Irish drama, a satirical serial on the state of modern poetry inspired by Animal Farm by playwright Sean Mac Mathuna, along with First Edition's usual mix of reviews, art work and essays. Back issues reveal topics as diverse as the ostrich syndrome in poetry, does cinema matter, and the potency of cheap music.
"Our idea was that a literary periodical was not just a collection of poems and fiction but should be a platform to debate the latest ideas and trends. We are different from other publications in that we are a team. We don't trust the decisions to just one editor," Simion says.
Writers Mary O'Donnell, Noel Monahan, Fred Johnson and Patrick Chapman act as consultant editors on First Edition. "We like to encourage the essay form which is such a strong part of the European tradition."
It was Samuel Beckett who brought Dumitrache to Ireland. As a student of English literature at the University of Bucharest in the early 1970s he came across Beckett's trilogy. "Joining Molloy in his pointless circular wandering and listening to the voice of The Unnameable meant for me the beginning of a lifelong admiration."
His graduation thesis was on character in Beckett's work, and he had plans to do his doctorate on the Irish writer. His ensuing tangles with the authorities in Romania, however, were to involve him in a theatre of the absurd worthy of his literary hero. "I went deeper into the study of Beckett's characters without realising I could identify with them more and more often, that their doomed-to-fail deeds foretold my futile initiatives." These were the Ceausescu years. After the Securitate tried to recruit him, he made an application to leave Romania for good. As a result, he lost his job as a teacher and the subject of his doctorate was rejected as not being a suitable field for scholastic inquiry. Dumitrache kept faith with Beckett while working at various jobs, as a librarian and as a journalist with one of Bucharest's daily newspapers, Timpul Capitali. He wrote two novels in this period but they were turned down because of their "too realistic" portrayal of Romania. One of the manuscripts was reduced by the censor from 287 pages to 75. They remain unpublished. Several more applications to leave Romania were turned down. One of his ambitions was to travel to Paris to meet Beckett. But waiting for a passport in those dark days of the 1980s was, he says, exactly like Waiting for Godot. Then came December 1989 when, as Dumitrache says, "with thousands of my compatriots I risked my life for a better one". It was also the month of Beckett's death.
Of the post-Ceausescu administration he will only say: "You could be attacked on the street by a gang of thugs, but you could get a passport within 24 hours." On the invitation of a friend he came to Ireland on a visit - in effect a Beckett pilgrimage, symbolically having his photograph taken outside Cooldrinagh, Beckett's family home in Foxrock.
"As a journalist still on a blacklist, my friends thought it better that I stay here," he says. He spent a period at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, in Monaghan where he "returned to literature". At Annaghmakerrig he worked on his own writing as well as translating Romanian poets into English. Afterwards he wanted to live somewhere close, hence the move to Cavan. "Most of my literary enterprises are connected with Monaghan," he observes.
He has never returned to Romania, though his literary ties with his homeland remain strong and one of the distinctive features of First Edition is a strong Romanian input. He has just co-edited a special Irish supplement of the 100-year-old Romanian literary magazine, Tribuna, which features his translations of the poetry of Nuala Ni Dhomnhaill, Pat Boran and Mary O'Donnell, among others. And in the future, through Millennium Three Press, he hopes to move into book publishing. Argus, a 300-page anthology of the best of the last two years of First Edition's contributions, was published last year, and Mary O'Donnell's translations of the Austrian poet, Ingeborg Bachmann, is on its way.
Unlike the more general Romanian experience in Ireland, Simion's has not been marred by prejudice. He has found - and created - a niche for himself. He admits to finding the Irish literary scene insular, something he has tried to offset in First Edition. It is the only time he reverts to easy reminiscences of Romania. "We writers used to meet in pavement cafes with the latest magazines and discuss what was being written and said," he says animatedly.
In Ireland he feels the absence of such debate about writing and the lack of such comradeship among writers, despite the smallness of the literary scene. Writing here, while prolific, tends to be individualised, he says.
Ruefully he admits that the Irish climate is not entirely conducive to the concept of the open-air cafe. So First Edition is like a substitute, a literary cafe on paper if you will, where the big ideas and the long view of art, literature, music and film, can be shared and argued over with as much vehemence and energy as those vigorous sessions in Bucharest.
First Edition can be reached at wpj@iol.ie or at 13 Town Hall Street, Cavan (Ph/Fax: 049-31640). The journal is available by subscription and in selected bookshops.
